What No New Particles Means for Physics - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160809-what-no-new-particles-means-for-physics/ <comment><USER2> Despite the more upbeat spin, I think the message from Arkani-Hamed is much the same as from Sabine Hossenfelder's "nightmare" post (discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12238197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12238197)).

Both of them are saying its time to question pre-conceived notions of how to extend the Standard model. And I think both of them are excited about it.

Rightly so. People are unhappy about the Standard Model because it is insufficiently simple and symmetrical. But 20 orders of magnitude lie between our experiments and the Planck scale, there's probably six levels of symmetry- braking, mess-making emergence between us and the real fundamentals.

<comment><USER3> Yup! Always good to remember that the hydrogen atom is "only" about 10 orders of magnitude smaller than us meter-scale objects, and what's going on with atoms took a long time to figure out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That final paragraph is great

 _Some theorists agree. Talk of disappointment is "crazy talk," Arkani-Hamed said. "It's actually nature! We're learning the answer! These 6,000 people are busting their butts and you're pouting like a little kid because you didn't get the lollipop you wanted?"_

<comment><USER5> I think disappointment is ok here.

They just spent 24 Billion and 30 years to discover _nothing_.

So next time they go to the governments of the world and say 'hey give us 24 Billion for the greatest experiment ever' ... what's going to happen?

Maybe we should give it to them, but there likely will be more scrutiny.

<comment><USER6> Think of it as an experiment to confirm or deny the standard model. So far it is confirming it.

<comment><USER5> "Think of it as an experiment to confirm or deny the standard model. So far it is confirming it."

I understand that very well.

But most of the Standard Model was well confirmed.

Really what we got was confirmation of Higgs.

The 'non confirmation' of a bunch of interesting theories is not a very big win.

But don't forget the politics of it all: this is bordering on a 'big lose'.

They spent 24 Billion and really didn't get much out of it. There was a lot of hope, maybe even promise, and really - we got the 'lowest outcome' possible.

Ask yourself: would we have spent 24 Billion to 'confirm Higgs'?

Anyhow - I'm glad it was done, and if it were up to me I'd have spent it, knowing the outcome, but the optics of this are bad.

<comment><USER7> _Ask yourself: would we have spent 24 Billion to 'confirm Higgs'?_

Yes. The Higgs field/boson is a fundamental feature of our best theory at the quantum scale and we needed to know whether we are right. Now we have another crucial bound for the theory that will supplant the standard model except now we can waste less time and money with theories that can't explain our results.

We spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a large metal can flying at an altitude of 400km essentially to do microgravity research; I think we can afford to spend a tenth of that on a particle accelerator to probe the frontier of high energy physics.

<comment><USER5> "We spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a large metal can flying at an altitude of 400km essentially to do microgravity research;"

This is not true. The space program has countless research opportunities, direct and indirect, with the underlying endeavour of objective of putting people on other planets, which is a pretty big opportunity in of itself.

I'm not sure paying $24 Billion to prove Higgs was worth it. I suggest maybe there were other, much less expensive ways to do that, were we to know up front that was the objective.

It's hard to say how much 'disproving a bunch of theories' is worth.

I suggest that much of theoretical physics is total rubbish speculation, which in some ways is 'ok', but it'd be nice to see some progress. If you add in String Theory to the pile ... it looks really bad for modern theoretical physics. Not much has happened in a very long time ... it seems there have been countless PhD's minted in fiction. Not good.

<comment><USER7> _This is not true. The space program has countless research opportunities, direct and indirect, with the underlying endeavour of objective of putting people on other planets, which is a pretty big opportunity in of itself._

I'm not talking about the space program, I'm talking about the ISS. What, exactly, are those direct and indirect opportunities? Looking at NASA's own PR material, it boils down to effects of deep space on humans (microgravity and radiation), effects of microgravity on biotechnology, environmental monitoring (which can be done cheaper with satellites), and .... effects of microgravity on everything else. I'm not saying it's not worth it as a human endeavor, but let's not kid ourselves: it was an insanely expensive project just like the LHC that doesn't really seem to have resulted in much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Imagine if you spent your whole life supporting some complex idea that is likely now to be BS. And you spread it.

I'm interested in the psychological aspects of identity.

I suggest a lot of them have not choice but to continue on believing their mythology. Their sense of self depends on it, and surely their funding does. And getting funding depends on strong sense of self.

Isn't it amazing that despite their good intentions, that so many of them are hustlers and shysters? I'm not making a direct moral comparison, but a pragmatic one ...

It would be nice to have some experiments that put String Theory to bed as well, though sadly, these are not even conceivable! The String Theorists careers are protected by the fact their theory cannot be unproven :)

<comment><USER8> This is one of the reasons why I'm in favor of basic income. People who get degrees in mathematics or physics can do their work uninhibited by the politics of getting funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This should send a strong message to the scientists who are more passionate about elegant and beauty of mathematics and think that nature is written in mathematics and using mathematics only they can figure out natures secret. I know this has worked couple of times in past where a mathematical theory predicted existence of some entity or phenomena and then it was found to be true through experiments BUT that doesn't mean this trick will always work coz we try to understand nature using the tool of mathematics and nature doesn't give a crap about what we use to understand it.

<comment><USER10> Mathematics has also been used extensively to correctly model experimental observations. But what would you propose instead of mathematics?

<comment><USER5> "But what would you propose instead of mathematics?"

It's not that we shouldn't use math, but I suggest that when using Math we are predisposed to want clean, simple equations that explain everything.

<comment><USER11> Maxwell's equations can be written as one equation with geometric algebra, □A =J/(c є0) If the math comes out ugly we can just macro our way to prettier math and stick complicated things behind simple looking symbols. I don't think this is a predisposition in the initial search as much as aesthetics on making the form of work pleasant regardless of what you start with. But then, maybe it's even more than aesthetics, truth and reality seem to have an (unreasonable?) simplicity to them, so maybe there's objective beauty in simplicity; I don't see the point in intentionally seeking out ugly formalisms for ugly's sake especially when we've had so much success with simple and elegant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Naturally this topic calls for an xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/401/](https://xkcd.com/401/)

And more appropriate to the diphoton bump: [https://xkcd.com/1437/](https://xkcd.com/1437/)

<comment><USER13> Or this one: [https://xkcd.com/1489/](https://xkcd.com/1489/)

<comment><USER14> The diphoton bump made me think of [https://xkcd.com/955/](https://xkcd.com/955/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stunningly lucid writing. Good job, Natalie Wolchover!

</comment><comment><USER16> What does it mean? Layoffs, probably.

We may have reached the end of what big accelerators can tell us. Fermilab was shut down in 2011.

<comment><USER17> Fermilab was not shut down in 2011. I believe the tevatron was shutdown in 2011, but research on site continues, and the "Proton Improvement Plan", which involves upgrading the accelerators, _started_ in 2011 and is ongoing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anybody know the consequences of this regarding the search for dark matter? Specifically, dark matter particles?

<comment><USER14> Most of the exotic particles created in colliders are unstable and decay quite quickly into lighter particles, so they're not good candidates for dark matter. _Which_ lighter particles are produced depends on properties of the initial particle, since quantities like electric charge are conserved (the initial particle's charge must equal the sum of the decay products' charges).

Supersymmetry predicts a new form of conserved charge called "R" charge; since none of the light particles we've seen has R charge, any heavy particles with R charge cannot decay into them, and hence some of those particles (the lightest ones) will be stable.

If such heavy, stable particles were common, they could make up the dark matter we've inferred exists.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightest_Supersymmetric_Partic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightest_Supersymmetric_Particle)

The problem is, each time a collider fails to find any of these heavy supersymmetry particles, the theory gets shuffled around and a new prediction is made with a higher mass. The mass range investigated by the LHC is now so large that it's difficult to shuffle around supersymmetry any more, and it might be time to consider it falsified.

<comment><USER19> Is there a widely agreed limit on how heavy dark matter particles must be?

I remember some Starts with a Bang post that said they must me "warm" particles, and heavy ones couldn't accumulate enough energy for matching. But I've never seen anybody else alk about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12238197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12238197)

<comment><USER21> This is not a dupe. This article has more information than the other. Both discuss the same topic. I'd classify them as "Related discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12238197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12238197) (307 points, 3 days ago, 199 comments)"

<comment><USER20> Does this Quanta article contain significant new information to be discussed? If so we'll unmark this one as a dupe and restore it. Otherwise it meets the criteria for a dupe which is: a specific topic having had significant discussion within the last year.

<comment><USER21> I think that the difference between the article is very big.

The quanta article discuss what they have saw in December and what they have saw now, in the section "The Bump that went away". Also that and why they expect to see a new particles due to supersimetry in the section "Missing Pieces".

The Backreaction article discuss more about the influence of the lack of a experimental evidence of an unknown particle in the physics community, i.e. that without an experimental guidance is difficult to choose between the different theoretical approach, and some ideas for future research.

Total different articles.

<comment><USER20> Thanks—we've restored this submission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> No new particles means that we're going to need a bigger accelerator.

<comment><USER23> At some point bigger accelerator doesn't help. It just creates bigger and bigger black holes.

<comment> T-A That point is a factor 10^14 away.</comment></comment></comment>


Expanding Access: Engineering Uber Lite - 076ae80a-3c97-4 https://eng.uber.com/engineering-uber-lite/ <comment><AUTHOR> Ola, their competitor in India, has a similar "lite" app as well[1]. In my experience, a better app.

[1] [https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2017/ola](https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2017/ola)

<comment><USER2> This is a Progressive Web App, as opposed to the native one that Uber is using. Do you feel that this is the reason it's better, or because you feel the Ola app does more, looks nicer, is smaller, etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks the lite version is actually a native app, unlike other "lite" apps (eg. google maps go) which are just wrappers around a PWA. Nice to see they actually spent effort into making it as smooth as possible.

<comment><USER4> I love the fanatical approach to high speed over a bad network -- fitting messages into 1 MTU is a real protip.

This article

[https://eng.uber.com/new-rider-app/](https://eng.uber.com/new-rider-app/)

talks about their main app and the talk about architecture is fascinating because it has the "factory factory" that builds the app and then the part that interacts with the API is kept separated from the UI code. I keep converging on solutions like that whenever I write GUI code because otherwise you will lose control sooner or later.

</comment></comment><comment> 076ae80a-3c97-4 It's nice to see app size and network speed talked about seriously. The size of some Android apps is astounding (looking at you Facebook) and the lack of consideration for those in rural areas when designing APIs can be remarkable.

<comment><USER5> Facebook is clearly a very pragmatic company. If ppl do not complain, then why spend time optimizing the file size.

Its a basic rule for startups as well: do not spend time or money on solving problems you do not (yet) have.

I think only we developers are aware of this. Not the general public ?

<comment><USER6> I think it's particularly important for Uber because their typical first-time user has an immediate need and is away from home. If the app takes too long to download over cellular data or random airport WiFi then they've likely lost a customer to the competition.</comment></comment></comment>


Quora Down? - <AUTHOR>

telling me Page Not Found (Error 500) http://i.imgur.com/B9IDd.png <comment><USER2> Who cares?

(A site that has been badly unreliable for me in past searches says that Quora is down at the moment.)

<http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/quora.com>

<comment><USER3> "Looks down from here" - but when trying to load it myself, it's up.</comment></comment>


Harvard research suggests an entire generation has lost faith in democracy - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/848031/harvard-research-suggests-that-an-entire-global-generation-has-lost-faith-in-democracy/ <comment><USER2> "Democracy is the worst form of government ... except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

The issue is that this entire generation hasn't really had much direct experience with "all those other forms."

<comment><USER3> democracy being the best choice is so ingrained in us from childhood, questioning it becomes painful. its like finding out about santa. cognitive dissonance comes into play, and any critical thinking is squashed. its hard for people to even question democracy in a hypothetical environment, it being the fairest is almost established as a basic law of physics.

even the title of the article ... "lost faith" seems to imply its a bad thing to question democracy.

<comment><USER4> > even the title of the article ... "lost faith" seems to imply its a bad > thing to question democracy.

No, it merely means that previous generations _did_ have faith in democracy. Whether that faith is well founded or not is not addressed.

<comment><USER3> "new generation gains critical awareness of democracy's faults, pitfalls, and shortcomings"

<comment><USER4> Was that in the title of the article at some point? I don't see it there now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This coincides with the invention of WikiPedia, Youtube, social media, search engines, and mobile phone cameras, which are the new pillars of democracy and allow the spread of information which in the past would not have been known.

<comment><USER6> They also allow to spread fake information which we are learning that it can be really, really bad.

<comment><USER5> Fake information has always been available, in fact it may have been the only information available at the time.

What is interesting is all of the new information and our ability to process it as much as we want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Millennials. Boomers. Millennials. Boomers. Repeat ad nauseam.

Generation X is sick of your bullshit.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but we're outnumbered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Huge if true, but I'm going to apply a huge amount of skepticism. Only 19% of millenials believe that military coups are illegitimate? Really?

<comment><USER10> It might depend on the interpretation of "legitimate", and make more sense if "are legitimate" is interpreted as "ever legitimate". For example, could a military coup in North Korea be "legitimate"?

They give some more detail in their linked earlier paper:

 _Similarly, while 43 percent of older Americans, including those born between the world wars and their baby-boomer children, do not believe that it is legitimate in a democracy for the military to take over when the government is incompetent or failing to do its job, the figure among millennials is much lower at 19 percent. In Europe, the generation gap is somewhat less stark but equally clear, with 53 percent of older Europeans and only 36 percent of millennials strongly rejecting the notion that a government's incompetence can justify having the army "take over."_

[http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Foa%26...](http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Foa%26Mounk-27-3.pdf)

While still striking, and while I still wonder whether generational differences in terminology are a factor, the addition of "when the government is incompetent or failing to do its job" does make it more plausible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Could this maybe because their democracy ratio defined as:

(decisions that your vote could influence)/(decisions that affect you)

...is low enough that they don't think it makes a difference either way?

Pro-tip: vote with your feet, this works.

</comment><comment><USER12> One thing I do not see mentioned, Democracy depends upon a educated voters and that education has been eroded greatly over the last 50 or so years. Voters also need to review real facts, not facts created by "Reality TV" shows we call the news media and various Internet Sites. No wonder faith in Democracy is falling. An educated person can easily spot these fake stories from a mile away.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if part of the problem is democracy is rather ill defined. I'm sure you have seen the classic case where some one says the United States is not a democracy but a republic... usually its a troll comment. Regardless I think there is general confusion as to what a democracy is [1] and isn't.

[1]: [http://www.economist.com/node/8908438](http://www.economist.com/node/8908438)

</comment><comment><USER14> > Only around a third of US millennials see civil rights as "absolutely > essential" in a democracy

Can we see the data for this? Absolutely shocking to me.

<comment><USER15> You can have a highly stable democracy without civil rights. Just look at the United States

<comment><USER16> Would you expand on this? Are you implying that the US isn't perfect in its civil rights in practice? Is actively against civil rights? Values civil rights and wants to improve? Had in the past huge disparities in civil rights and was still stable at those times?

<comment><USER15> I was mainly referring to the civil rights practices of the United States in the past (i.e. Slavery, segregation, lack of suffrage for women, etc).

The United States functioned just fine as a democracy when well over half of it's population was lacking basic rights. Civil rights aren't required in a democracy as long as a portion of the population (classically white males in the US) has the right to vote.

<comment><USER16> Gotcha. There's nuance in this answer that wasn't obvious to me in your first comment. Thanks for expanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Something to note in the article is how interest in politics overall has declined in the newer generation. Thus the lack of faith in democracy, if such a trend is legitimate, may be the result of an increasingly apathetic culture.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think that it's interesting that a lot of the major social advances in the US—ending segregation, legalizing abortion, legalizing gay marriage—are the result of Supreme Court decisions, which is probably the least democratic part of our government. Not all, certainly. But I guess I'm not so surprised that some young people don't see democratic action as the only way to advance social progress.</comment>


Liquidation Preference (my case for 2x, non-participating) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/05/liquidation-preference-my-case-for-2x-non-participating.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+yegg+%28Gabriel+Weinberg%27s+Blog%29 <comment><USER2> For a technical explanation of the difference between participating and non- participating preferred stock, see [http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2007/06/15/what-is- the-d...](http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2007/06/15/what-is-the- difference-between-non-participating-preferred-stock-and-participating- preferred-stock/).

Liquidation preferences at the angel stage are not in themselves too critical so long as they are generally reasonable and 2x/non-participating doesn't work any particular hardship for founders and early-stage employees where the investment amount is in the $1 million range.

The problem is the impact on later rounds. If VCs take a 2x liquidation preference, say, for a $10 million investment, then any exit of $20 million or less is a wipeout for founders and early-stage employees. Couple that with the pressure to shoot for a 10x return on whatever that VC investment is and you can get a shoot-for-the-moon mindset that heightens risk on the one side and a let's-cut-our-investment-risk-and-get-rid-of-this-non-performing-startup mindset on the other that heightens risk on the other (assuming the VCs have control, which they normally do).

Thus, 2x (or higher) is usually seen as _highly_ unattractive by founders even if its immediate implications at the angel stage are not necessarily bad. In my experience, in all normal investment environments, founders will resist it and fight for 1x only (usually going for participation with a cap).

Your experience may vary but this has been mine over many years in Silicon Valley.

I can understand the logic of 2x as explained in this fine piece from the angel perspective. On its own terms, it makes sense and is reasonable for that stage. As long as it doesn't spill over into subsequent rounds, it creates no problems in itself.

<comment><USER3> Thx for your comment--that is great validation. I also just found your other great posts (<http://www.twitter.com/grellas>).

I should have been more clear in my post about my current strategy. I'm really looking for deals that, if successful with the angel money, may not need VC with decent probability, and if they do take VC, it wouldn't be for that much. In other words, I'm less concerned with the risk of follow-on terms at the moment.

That being said, I wonder if they can be justified if the angel round is small. Say I it's a $250K round and so the preference takes up $500K. You go to raise $3M VC and the VC says we want 2x because they got it. Can't the entrepreneur say, look that was for the angels because the round was so small and it doesn't make sense for us in a round this large? Of course it is all negotiable but the knee-jerk "we need to get everything they got and more" seems out of place here.

Also, I'd personally be fine with participation with a cap. It just seems entrepreneurs are more willing to go with 2x, non-participating. But my experience is very limited so if that's the norm it's fine with me. What terms do you usually see, 1.5x with participation at a 3x cap?

<comment><USER2> Thanks in turn for your kind words.

Your strategy makes perfect sense for startups that look to take in angel money only or that look to do so at first in hopes of building significant value before approaching VCs down the road, they hope, from a position of strength. This is the going strategy today in the Valley and many of our startups use it.

The issue in dealing with the VCs is primarily a psychological one and I would say that, other than in an extremely down investment environment, most would be willing to let go on something like 2x if the market as a whole for VC investments is not supporting it (the long-term norm is 1x - during the dot- bomb phase, it was more like 3x-5x - today it is somewhere in between). So, yes, I think the issue can normally be argued, and argued successfully, especially if the startup is positioned well and can be selective.

The terms for participation with a cap will vary widely but, in essence, do not come out much differently in practical terms than would a 2x/non- participating type of preference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting post. It's probably worth adding columns to show things like the founders' return in these scenarios to illustrate where this middle plateau is (where the investors return is the same or near the same).

<comment><USER5> There's a bunch of other complicating factors, too, which interact with the founders' share. For example, when hiring early employees, startups often use equity as a significant part of the compensation package. But, roughly speaking, the better for the angel or VC the preferences are, the less value any given offer of % equity will have to the employee. So, unless the employee is a sucker, better terms for the angel or VC mean more % equity or up-front salary you'll have to offer the employee to compensate.

<comment><USER6> > So, unless the employee is a sucker, better terms for the angel or VC mean > more % equity or up-front salary you'll have to offer the employee to > compensate.

Great point.

Since equity has to sum to 100 at every point, that "extra" is fairly expensive.

If it translates to more salary, it adds risk to the biz.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I disagree with this approach for angels. I'll approach it from two angles, an investor willing to think through and modify terms, and an investor that wants a boilerplate set of terms for every deal. In the first case, it's important to think through the shape of the entire return curve. If a company is 100% common stock with no liquidation preference, and you own 20%, your return is linear, $0.20 for every dollar of sale value. As soon as you add preferences, participation, caps, etc, that line is no longer straight. A 2x preference, for example, strongly weights the low value exits (the curve is steeper from O to the 2x amount, then reduces in slope). In the negotiation between the investor and the management team, each side has views of what the ultimate value may be (or what a probability weighted view of potential exits might be), and each side can manipulate the shape of that curve to match his expectations. For example, if the investor is worried about a low priced exit, and the management thinks the company is worth a lot more, a 2x liquidation preference and a higher valuation works for both parties. Investors get more of the exit value at a low price, and management gets more on the upside (because of the higher valuation results in more percentage ownership for them). If both sides understand how these terms work, creative use of preferences, participation, and caps can help everyone get to a deal that works. If, however, one wants a standard set of terms for every deal, I would recommend sticking with straight up 1x non-participating preferred and reducing the number of variables to one: valuation. 2x is usually perceived as not founder friendly and raises unnecessary concerns (whether real or perceived). It also sets a bad precedent for subsequent institutional investors, who will likely ask for 2x as well in order to be on the same ground. If the institutional financing is substantially larger than the angel round (as is usually the case), the angels end up losing by the precedent they set. With the institutional financing in place, the return for the angels is (almost always) better when both institutional and angel investors have 1x, than if both have 2x. Whether or not it is justified, institutional investors are often going to seek "fairness" by having terms on par with (or better) than angels. Setting a precedent with 2x for the angels will lead them to go for 2x as well, which doesnt help the founders and doesn't help the angels.

</comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, all of Weinberg's arguments apply to early employees as well.

Perhaps they should ask for 4 weeks of severance. Of course, since startups are risky, the best way to do that is to pay them a month in advance.</comment>


Researchers blur the line between classical and quantum physics - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-07-blur-line-classical-quantum-physics.html <comment><USER2> Here is a link to the arXiv page for the paper:

[http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.00600](http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.00600)

</comment><comment><USER3> I never got past first-year physics in college, so hopefully you guys can help me understand these findings a bit more.

So, quantum entanglement is essentially the idea that the quantum state of a group particles cannot factored out individually. Chaos theory is the idea that complex systems are deterministic, but that even minute changes in the initial parameters of the system, or the forces applied to the system can cause dramatically different outcomes.

The issue with binding these models is that quantum mechanics operates on probabilities, which are fundamentally incompatible with the idea of determinism. It's impossible to call a quantum system deterministic when, for example, measuring the spin of a particle has a 50% chance of a different outcome each measurement, regardless of the initial state.

Is this understanding somewhat correct?

If so, the implication of this research is that quantum entanglement somehow produces a deterministic environment from a large collection of probabilities? Almost like a reverse monte carlo simulator?

<comment><USER4> > Chaos theory is the idea that complex systems are deterministic, but that > even minute changes in the initial parameters of the system, or the forces > applied to the system can cause dramatically different outcomes.

You can have chaotic deterministic dynamics, and this can help explain why formally deterministic systems are indeterministic in practice. But you can just as well have chaotic dynamics in a formally indeterministic system. Chaos is about (a) sensitive dependence on initial conditions and (b) bounded phase space (or some sort of other restriction that implies the "folding" phenomena when combined with (a)). In particular, there is a whole field of quantum chaos, and there's nothing contradictory about it.

> If so, the implication of this research is that quantum entanglement somehow > produces a deterministic environment from a large collection of > probabilities?

Nope.

<comment><USER5> If I may make a correlation to initial conditions and randomness: [https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/19168c663618b7f07158](https://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/19168c663618b7f07158)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, entanglement could be said to be chaotic. Sounds more plausible than most attempts to bind these models together more succinctly.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, another link between classical thermodynamic processes, and quantum processes involved in non-locality. Speculation as to the nature of the arrow of time being a result of decoherence, and now a link between the behavior of entangled ensembles and chaotic systems thermalizing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could someone try to explain why "there's no idea of chaos in a quantum system"? To me that sounds weird -- I thought the entire premise behind quantum probabilities was our inability to get more definite answers from the subatomic world?

<comment><USER9> For chaos to manifest itself you need at least two things. First, the equations of the dynamical system have to be nonlinear. Second, the dimensionality of the systems has to be greater than 3. In quantum mechanics, all the equations are linear, so there is no place for chaos in a strict mathematical sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was really into physics in college. After taking a course on chaos theory and one on advanced quantum mechanics, I started getting a very strong feeling that whole quantum mechanics is kinda BS(like its just a mathematical model, not a representation of reality, ala GTR). And that chaotic systems is where the key to understanding the quantum world is.

So I took some time out to step back and see what my life would look like if I pursued physics, given the current state of affairs. Didn't like it at all.

Dropped out, learnt programming, started a company this year, finishing up the product for first 10 customers, and have a very strong feeling that we are onto something big!

<comment><USER11> Everything you could possibly use to describe reality is a model. What else could it possibly be?

<comment><USER10> A model you can talk about without mathematics. Which doesn't need mathematics to form an intuition about.

STR and GTR are perfect examples of models which you can help even a layman develop an intuitive understanding of by just talking to them, without mathematics.

<comment><USER12> You can certainly explain even something as sophisticated as quantum field theory to laymen if you take the right approach. Feynman did just this in his lectures on QED, now available in book form. He didn't use any math, even though he talked about his own solution to the entirely mathematical problem of renormalization in QED.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ELI5 - please :)

<comment><USER14> Physicists are working, it's difficult, they might need help.</comment></comment>


Kanye West v. 0DayCoins and Amazon - Coinye Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/199664565/Kanye-West-v-0DayCoins-and-Amazon-Coinye-Lawsuit

<comment><USER2> And it's dead: [http://coinyeco.in/](http://coinyeco.in/)

<comment><AUTHOR> How can they do this! Are we gonna let Kanye West's lawyers win! The first amendment's at stake here!</comment></comment>


Show HN: MuscleWiki – A fitness website using gifs - <AUTHOR> https://www.musclewiki.org <comment><USER2> This is really neat. It stands an easy-to-understand reference among many poorly-written fitness editorials and programs, many of which will require novices to lookup each exercise and assume that the new source is demonstrating them properly.

Your exercise selection and order also looked wise, beginning with compound movements and ending with more isolated movements.

Suggestions: 1)I didn't see wide grip pull-ups or chin-ups after clicking back and biceps. Why not?

2) Would be nice to see some form of cleans displayed.

3) If you add a program section, you may want to check out Fitloop.co [1] for inspiration. It does a good job of presenting a sound bodyweight program with explanations.

[1] [https://fitloop.co/routines/bwf-recommended-beginner- routine](https://fitloop.co/routines/bwf-recommended-beginner-routine)

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Agreed. Right now until I can find someone who knows how to dev. I'm trying to keep the page to 4 movements per page (to helping any loading issues). It'll come for sure though, we also have it filmed.

2) Cleans IMO is quite a complex movement. I'm looking to apply an "advanced" button on the homepage sometime soon that will enable people to select more advanced movments like this (and deadlifts, but I feel they were too important not to include) 3) For sure!

Thanks for the feedback. This has been in my mind as a site for such a long time, I'm glad to actually have people seeing it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Today I launched MuscleWiki. The goal of this website is to make a easy to use, to the point, exercise guide. Version one enables people to click a body part and then get quick loading, high res gifs. No 10 minutes intro explaining, no super low resolution.

I plan on expanding this into male/female/home/gym/kettlebells/etc options that users can check. I also plan on opening the site up to the community to develop trusted sources of information.

I also want to add tools (things like macro calculators and one rep max estimate)

I am not a programmer. I have done this to the best of my ability working in an ops background. It leveraged mediawiki, bootstrap and had my friend draw the graphics to get where I am today.

<comment><USER3> Great idea!

Have you considered giving the user the option to load gifs individually (or in sets of 2 as your app seems to be organized)? Loading 20+ gifs per muscle groups takes a lot of time and bandwidth on slower connections.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! That's pretty much one of the end goals. I need a dev on board really (and I'm searching)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love this! I usually youtube correct form to remind myself before doing more complex lifts and when deciding my next rotation. BTW, the barbell bicep curl you have posted is actually a Barbell Drag Curl. Here is the bicep curl. [https://youtu.be/LY1V6UbRHFM](https://youtu.be/LY1V6UbRHFM)?

</comment><comment><USER5> Are you planning on filling out those body parts that aren't currently clickable? I know you can't really lift weight for wrists, for example, but working on their mobility is fairly important, especially for those of us attached to a keyboard.

<comment><USER6> You can lift weights for wrists. Though that's a bit like saying "lift weights for elbows".

The actual muscles are in the forearms. [https://musclewiki.org/Forearms](https://musclewiki.org/Forearms)

<comment><USER7> Depends how strict you're trying to be...

Yes, the extensor indicis and pollicis longus muscles are "part of the forearm" but most people would consider those "wrists". While FPL and FDP would be "forearm". I'd argue pronator quadratus is also "wrists" even though it is also "part of the forearm".

Note: Wikipedia for names, I only wish I knew my muscles that well. But I understand what nataliam511 meant by "wrists".

<comment><USER6> True. Anyway, my link shows what you can do for your "wrists" with weights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Idea: add women gifs!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's coming very soon. (the image will change based on selection of male/female) as will the gifs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome. Looks like it will be helpful.

Ideas:

\- Add a challenges section to the site where people can challenge their friends to do the exercise (5 times, 10 times) etc.

\- Let people add videos/gifs of themselves doing the same exercises

\- Add a comments section to each exercise

</comment><comment><USER10> Look great, although I would suggest switching the gifs to webm, the site will load a lot faster and you're going to save a lot on bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty cool but it's offline now. Any ideas?

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome, I was just about to go look for straight forward gifs exactly like this.</comment>


Apple Announces Beatles Collection - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/the-beatles/id136975

<comment><USER2> I am at a loss for words. Mostly because they are bads ones and I don't like being negative.

</comment><comment><USER3> Worth noting that the dispute dates back to 1978, so it's a big deal for many that it's come to an end; perhaps not for people who aren't interested in buying music they already own, but the achievement's still worth celebrating.

It's hard for Apple to announce anything quietly these days, so I think they've managed it pretty well; a leak to the WSJ, an understated holding page (albeit with a rather bold claim), and a stylish full-screen feature on the homepage.

Anything bolder might have raised even more false hopes of something 'bigger'. Anything more demure and it might have failed to give credit to a quarrel that's lasted over three decades.

</comment><comment><USER4> That was it? One more thing?

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v._Apple_Computer> somehow relevant.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know the technical details? DRM? Remastered recordings? Bitrates? Available in all markets?

i see that Live at the BBC, Anthology, and Yellow Submarine Songtrack (not Soundtrack) are not there. So not quite compleat beatles.

<comment><USER7> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store#File_format> 256kbps .m4a file with an option to convert to an .mp3. For anyone who takes music quality seriously the lack of a lossless option is a big turn off. No DRM on the purchases unless you live in Japan where some albums are covered by DRM.

Will do more research when I get home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> downvote me to hell, but: booooring!

I was hoping for streaming :(

<comment><USER9> Gruber was right last night when he pointed out that it was never going to be anything that big else they'd be hosting a full event for it.

It's nice and a nice bit of PR for Apple but nothing more. It's not as if this is music that was unavailable, it's just music that was unavailable on iTunes. It was always going to happen sooner or later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I should have figured as much, but part of me was hoping it was something like the official release of iOS 4.2.

I figured it was November, and we already knew what the features were going to be, so no need for Jobs to give a presentation. I just couldn't figure out what would make it a day I'd never forget. I guess I'm still wondering what about this is something I'd never forget.

<comment><USER11> Ok, let's assume everyone knows who The Beatles are and will never forget them or their music (and above a certain age that is a more than reasonable assumption).

So the teaser banner said: "Tomorrow is just another day. That you'll never forget."

Post announcement, you can read it as: "Today is just another day that you'll never forget The Beatles."

Which is true (even though it was deceptive... but it was just a teaser banner on a website after all).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ughh...truly I was hoping this wouldn't make it on here.

<comment><USER13> Well, the announcement post got >100 upvotes, so I think it's appropriate that the follow-up gets to the front page (even if it's anticlimactic).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This still doesn't explain why I haven't been able to add new applications to iTunes Connect for the past few days, until now. They seriously stopped that process for this?

<comment><USER14> Why the downvotes? This morning after they launched this, you could once again add apps and they'd actually show up in iTunes Connect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was blown way out of proportion by the media. Did anyone really think Apple would introduce streaming without Steve Jobs doing a presentation on it?

<comment><USER16> The media has no vested interest in maintaining skepticism anymore, on any event, in any context.

People keep coming back to the respective sites no matter how many times they blow minor things out of proportion. No matter how many times they construct huge stories around zero facts. No matter how many times they skew things into a false dichotomy to rile up bases. No matter how many times they ignore the important in favor of the soundbite.

So, yeah, _of course_ it was blown out of proportion. They had nothing else _easy_ to write about that would garner half as much attention as veiled promises of magic from Cupertino on an otherwise quiet Monday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I not sure if they will make alot of money, If i remember right the copyright for the Beatles earliest songs are about to expire, i am wonder if EMI is doing this to squeeze any money out of these song?

<comment><USER18> The copyright on the original vinyl performances is going to expire, hence the rash of remastering. New works = fresh copyright.

<comment><USER19> Jesus. I had never realized that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> today's a day I won't forget? The day Apple announced yet another way to buy songs from the world's most popular band?

<comment><USER21> It's a reference to Beatles's[del][del][del] Paul McCartney's song "Another Day". And this is kind of a big deal as Beatles was one of the last really big top-tier bands that blocked every attempt to distribute their records online. They still cannot be streamed on Spotify but it's just a question of time now.

I feel that many people here don't really appreciate the importance of this. This is really the beginning of the end of the old ways of the music recording industry, and a new music recording industry is emerging right now. Very interesting times indeed for those of us who are working in this field or anyone who loves music.

And yes, it was Apple, not any of the major record labels or consumer electronics companies that has brought us this change.

<comment><USER22> I think this is more like the end of the end... The traditional model is dead for many years already.

<comment><USER23> I was amazed to see someone say yesterday that 3/4ths of music is still sold on CDs. I can't remember the last time I even _considered_ buying a CD.

<comment><USER24> Easy to play CDs in the car.

<comment><USER25> Over two years ago I bought an Alpine head unit for my car that doesn't even take CDs. It has an iPod jack, a USB jack, and an 1/8" audio jack. The day before I installed that was the last day I even considered buying or burning audio CDs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Speeding up independent binary searches by interleaving them - <AUTHOR> https://lemire.me/blog/2019/09/14/speeding-up-independent-binary-searches-by-interleaving-them/ <comment><USER2> I was expecting this to be about fractional cascading which is a really clever trick: [http://blog.ezyang.com/2012/03/you-could-have-invented- fract...](http://blog.ezyang.com/2012/03/you-could-have-invented-fractional- cascading/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not sure why is he talking about branching prediction when this is really about caching. The next integer to look at is unlikely to be in the CPU data cache, and so each time we have to go to main memory. If we interleave the searches, we interleave the memory requests, and get higher throughput.

Or am I wrong?

<comment><USER4> If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the conditional move means that both next values are prefetched into cache, whereas a branch means that fetch doesn't happen until the comparison is made.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately I think that's backwards on both sides.

Conditional moves create a data dependency, and thus do not involve speculative execution. While the program can explicitly try to preload both possible values (and can benefit from doing so) the processor doesn't ever do this automatically. Other instructions can still be executed (out-of-order) but the path of execution does not change.

With a branch, rather than waiting for the results of the comparison to be known, the processor guesses at the result and chooses a path of execution. It thus executes the fetch immediately, but (about) half the time it's the wrong fetch. If after the original load completes it realizes that it guessed the wrong side of the branch, an 'exception' occurs, the speculative work is thrown away, and the execution begins again with the correct branch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think I'm missing something. Under what conditions do you want to search through several _identically sized_ lists independently? (I had assumed from the title that this would be about performing many independent queries against the same list, optionally with SIMD, instead of one query against many lists).

It wouldn't be a huge change to also make the N-value "per query", but then you get a lot more branches in the inner loop. Even then though, I'm struggling to remember situations where I thought "I have a dozen lists where I need to do binary search for each of them".

<comment><USER7> It definitely comes up in search-index style posting lists. For dense postings you'll usually deal with bitmaps, but you'll have sorted integers for sparse ones and you usually have at least one list per search term.

There's all sorts database indexing problems that can use this too, I'm sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You could also use SIMD instructions, and there are bitwise operator tricks that might be able to mostly avoid branching.

<comment><USER5> I'll ask you an open question: do you need to use SIMD to get maximum speed on this problem? I think the answer is yes, but only because with a certain level of MLP you run out of architectural registers and your compiler starts swapping things to stack. Daniel thinks (hopes?) the answer is no, and that with sufficient finesse you can get the same speed without SIMD.

The problem (well, at least very similar problems that we've thought about more) ends up running at very low IPC, with most of the time being spent waiting for data from RAM or L3. You can fit a lot of extra instructions in without seeing a slowdown. If there is a benefit to SIMD, both of us think it will be a fairly small effect, and only at very high levels of MLP. But we'd be excited to be proven wrong!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shouldn't the CPU just switch to a different thread while it is waiting for a memory request to be fulfilled? So you could just run binary searches in different threads.

<comment><USER5> It's a good question, but I think that the problem is that the overhead of switching between threads is much greater than the number of cycles wasted by waiting for the memory request. I think the fastest context switches on Linux are around 1 µs (1/1000000 of a second, or about 4,000 cycles)[1], whereas a request from RAM is around 25 ns (1/40 of a µs, or about 100 cycles)[2].

It's possible my numbers are off by a bit, but I think this means that on a standard CPU, you really need to parallelize the search more explicitly rather than letting the OS handle it for you. GPU's on the other hand do take a similar "brute force" approach to context switching, and clearly have good results on some similar problems.

[1] [https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2018/measuring-context- switchi...](https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2018/measuring-context-switching- and-memory-overheads-for-linux-threads/)

[2] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake- review-670...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake- review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/7)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks similar to a technique used in Cisco VPP to process batches of packets very efficiently; it's a cool way to cheat the pipeline.

</comment><comment><USER11> What I don't understand though is why it wouldn't make sense to sort the keys that are looked for first and look them up in order while traversing the tree. Seems much better from a cacheing perspective..

EDIT: Ah, each look-up was in different trees. That takes away that optimization.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like at the surface like ray bundles that are used in ray tracing acceleration.

</comment><comment><USER13> The article doesn't seem to consider real life practicality enough. For example, what speed up do you get with this, over caching the most frequently accessed million data items using a constant time lookup?

The answer of course, is it heavily depends on your problem space and data size and characteristics.

Caching is somewhat discussed, and I get that the topic is not data structures and algorithms; However it seems impossible to say when this approach would be useful in general without more practical considerations.

How easy would it be maintain or enhance this kind of code? Would you get emails like "...we have a few bugs in the 16-way interleaved multithreaded binary search code, who wants quickly get those cleaned up...".

<comment><USER14> > The article doesn't seem to consider real life practicality enough.

It considers it plenty for an article in the category "neat trick/wrinkle of processor caches and pipelining you may not have known/thought about to its limit." If you're actually doing binary searches on sets large enough to where this would matter, most often some kind of hash based solution is going to be preferable anyway, because of its much higher degree of cache efficiency and better asymptotic performance. That's not this article's purpose, though. Not every article is a tutorial.

<comment><USER13> Who said it should be a tutorial? I agree on that point it's not a how to, and a tutorial is probably a contradiction for the topic.

That doesn't mean it can't discuss practicalities. Plenty of advanced papers, blog posts, documentation, experiments, whatever, discuss engineering realities because they feel like it.

The reality is some things are less intuitive and require more outside the problem thinking than others.

If someone is writing about how binary trees work alone, not concurrent programming as well as is done here, there's little point to considering applications because it's simply useful to know and apply the concept so often.

However this one is an edge case, and even when you need it I would doubt many seasoned engineers wouldn't still benefit from contextual considerations from the author.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What startups use Firebase in production? - <AUTHOR>

I've seen Firebase used in more and more applications lately, but are there any startups that are using it in production? <comment><USER2> If you scroll down to the "Fireside Chats" section on the customers page ([https://www.firebase.com/customers/](https://www.firebase.com/customers/)) you can see some examples</comment>


HTTPSNow - <AUTHOR> https://www.httpsnow.org/ <comment><USER2> I hadn't heard of this. I started a similar effort a couple of days ago.

<https://github.com/benatkin/pure-ssl>

One thing I'm impressed with is sites that allow people to embed images from anywhere but still don't have mixed content. The way GitHub and Convore do this is by making images from an http-only domain available on an https domain. If you try pasting an image from GitHub pages (GitHub pages is HTTP only) and you inspect an image on Convore I think it will point to an https address on Rackspace Cloud Files.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ycombinator: [https://www.httpsnow.org/domains?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search[n...](https://www.httpsnow.org/domains?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search\[name_contains\]=ycombinator.com&commit=Search)

Then there's this comment: 'pg doesn't care about security.'

<comment><USER4> Actually we've been talking about switching to https.

<comment><USER5> Are you also going to make a m.ycombinator.com ever?

<comment><USER6> Why bother?

I'm using one of THE worst browsers out, called the Blackberry Browser. Yet HN is one of the few websites that renders just as well as my updated ubuntu machine running newest firefox.

<comment><USER7> Probably because he's not a Blackberry user... :)

<comment><USER6> Oh very true :)

I tried to help back when DDG started out here. DDG was doing 'funky business' on my BB curve 8530, which made it unusable. I offered assistance with making it BB friendly. He asked for screenshots.....(drumroll)

Do you know how hard it is to make screenshots of a BB device? GAH. You need it plugged in a Windows computer (sorry, no Mac or Linux) and have a package on your BB, and run a program with the usb cable connected, and the screenshot goes to the computer. WTF?

On a I(Phone|Pod Touch), I press the sleep button and then tap the home button. _CHING_

"Completely aside"... Im ditching my BB when my contract ends :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where the hell is the legend?

<comment><USER3> Click on down arrow on right and click show link. It appears the minus circle means 'Not Applicable'. X square = No, tick square = Yes.

It's a pretty clunky interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They should redesign the header so that the site title looks like an actual header instead of a large text box. I spent a while trying to click on it to enter in my own site to check.

<comment><USER10> .. or better yet, make it work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The barrier to ubiquitous encryption on the web is the requirement that everyone purchase an overprice certificate.

What we need is HTTPC, which would be SSL without verification. It would not show up as verified like HTTPS-- no green bar, etc. It would look just like HTTP, except with encryption.

<comment><USER12> You can get free standard SSL certificates from StartSSL - <https://www.startssl.com>

They also offer extended validation and other paid options. I use them for wildcard certificates, which are normally at least $200 each. I've created nine wildcard certs since January 1, for a total cost of $50.

<comment><USER13> An interesting aspect of StartSSL is that they require physical residence addresses for natural persons even for their low-verification certificates. This seems a bit strong for "validate that the site that I'm talking to is 'legitimately' bound to name X"; this is the reason I've been on the fence about going that route.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know that it's really ideal to try to force all normal browsing activity to HTTPS. If a person is concerned about pedestrian, non-identifying data, like reading HN, then he should take it upon himself to set up a VPN or some other mechanism to encrypt his data. Why do we want to establish a standard of default HTTPS?

<comment><USER3> For the same reason users want privacy when looking up embarrassing information even when not registered: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/AOL_search_da...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal)

<comment><USER15> Well HTTPS wouldn't have prevented that. In the AOL case the company at the other end of the connection released the information.

I guess someone in a sensitive position (e.g. someone with access to the routers at a major ISP) could intercept a every bit of traffic and produce a similar result but it doesn't seem likely and there's a flip side to this argument which is it puts a financial strain on the companies themselves.

Wikipedia, for instance, surely wouldn't have the processing power to switch all its connections to https. So they'd have to significantly upgrade their infrastructure at an equally significant cost.

<comment><USER3> HTTPS may not be able to prevent companies releasing information, but the article shows the similar kind of information that eavesdropping could yield. You say Wikipedia wouldn't have the processing power to switch all connections to https, but I see that eavesdroppers wouldn't have the processing power to decrypt all connections to https.

I would point to Iran and similar countries happy that users don't use encrypted connections but I found too many replies of "It won't happen to us [in this peaceful country]."

<comment><USER14> Again, HTTPS isn't the only mechanism by which one can encrypt his/her communications. Persons in Iran should use a VPN or something like Tor or I2P. I don't think there's a reason to force Wikipedia to use HTTPS by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I might argue that Google does not encrypt all identifying data

<comment><USER16> Oh boo hoo, I insulted everyone's favorite monopoly</comment></comment>


Barnes and Noble expanding affiliate network? - <AUTHOR> http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2011/06/28/barnes-amp-noble-select-linkshare-affiliate-network.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems like B&N might be planning on aggressively going after former Amazon affiliates in states like California?

They were one of the beg retailers lobbying for the CA sales tax law.</comment>


Why Supporting Your Competitors is Good for Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailymuse.com/entrepreneurship/why-supporting-your-competitors-is-good-for-business/

<comment><USER2> I would say this advice primarily applies when your competitors are solid companies working hard on the same space. Maybe less so if you have reason to believe they're deceptive and/or trouble

<comment><USER3> \- Support your good competitors, not the bad ones.

\- I agree on supprting competitors in an early stage market, as long there is enough beers and pizzas for everybody. In a mature market, things are different, take your time and your ressources to support...your team and your customers.</comment></comment>


Neighbors Clash in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/neighbors-clash-in-silicon-valley-1465291802 <comment><USER2> Build Baby Build! I was first aghast when I saw the new big apartment buildings coming up on El Camino Real and San Antonio Ave in Mountain View and Sunnyvale- with barely 1-5 feet set back from the the sidewalk. Then I realized which side of the table I was and I was like Fuck It. It may not be pretty, someone pulled a fast one on the Inspector/Panel/whoever but they are helping me with making more housing avbl and hopefully rents more affordable.

<comment><USER3> Setbacks are very often a complete waste of space. I think www.strongtowns.org has some articles explaining the details.

<comment><USER4> I believe these are streets with CalTrans right of way, which means the ROW extends the whole sidewalk. They (or MV) likely require the setback at property lines as a matter of course, and in turn the developer would want that space for balconies or bay windows or whatever that they can't hang over the line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://archive.is/h939P](http://archive.is/h939P) Sans-paywall link

</comment><comment><USER6> This seems like some sort of a strange failure of capitalism - I mean, the money is there, why can't it be allocated correctly? If the big brains in silicon valley riding the wave are unable or unwilling to set their egos/greed aside and figure this out, maybe the government should step in and take over allocation of taxes, where buildings are built, etc for the entire region. I'm pretty hard right but if capitalists can't get their shit together, bring on the central planning. But what if that fails? Tough luck, you had more money than you knew what to do with and plenty of time to do it, take it as a lesson to the next bubble.

<comment><USER7> There's nothing capitalist about zoning. What you are seeing is central planning in action.

<comment><USER8> Cities that are adding housing could enact taxes on residents who work outside of the city (or, more likely, exempt those that work in the city, are retired or self-/un-employed.) That would add a market force to both offset the cost of zoning residential over commercial as well as putting additional pressure on those cities that have not kept up with the demand for housing. It could even be sold as an environmental measure to discourage longer commutes.

This wouldn't make sense for suburbs where jobs are limited, but for San Francisco, Oakland or another city that does have available jobs, it would. Because otherwise, cities like Mountain View build nothing but commercial, make tons of money and shirk their responsibility to house the people working in those commercial developments.

In classic Libertarian fashion, you could argue we need only properly account for the externalities and the market will solve the problem. But when externalities are allowed to go unchecked, as is the case here, things get bad.</comment></comment></comment>


Java 6 for Mac released -- sort of - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/javaformacosx105update1.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Only works on recent machines with Intel Core 2 and Leopard.

Remember to run the Java Preferences utility to set this as your default or you'll keep running the old version.</comment>


EazeMD: Now available on iOS and Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151207005759/en/Eaze-Launches-Medical-Marijuana-Telehealth-iOS-Android <comment><AUTHOR> EazeMD now makes on-demand physician evaluations possible from any mobile device.</comment>


Teller Reveals His Secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-His-Secrets.html?c=y&story=fullstory <comment><USER3> The real trick here is that Teller hasn't revealed anything new about the secrets of magic. One of the dirty secrets is that a magician does her best work with a willing audience.

People want to be amazed. All magic requires misdirection, sure, but the audience is usually in a frame of mind that's willing to suspend disbelief for a moment long enough for the magician to exploit it. Think about how a street magician works a group: "Would you like to see a magic trick?"

I know one magician who sets the frame of mind of his audience by doing something so ludicrous it attracts a crowd. He sits outside a fast food joint eating lunch and pulls an amazingly large straw out of the bag. It's more clever than "would you like to see a trick," but the effect is the same.

I've always been amazed how great magicians can take a relatively simple trick, like a forced card (which always offers an audience member a choice, but the card is always predetermined). Magicians do the sleight of hand right in front of a crowd of people, in plain sight, but nobody notices. Because they don't want to notice. They've allowed their minds to wander for a moment, which is why magicians rarely repeat tricks with the same audience and when they do, its usually a variation of the first that combines another trick (Teller's #5).

One of my favorite card tricks is a classic. Select a card and put it back in the middle of the deck. It keeps rising to the top of the deck every time you stick it in the middle. The reality is that you never actually get to put your card in the middle of the deck. You may have selected initially your card, but everything after that is controlled, down to how the magician makes you hold your card when it's handed back to you. My favorite way to start the trick is with a mental magic joke: Tell the subject to think of a card. Then flip over the top card in the deck, which is almost never the card, but would be pretty cool if it was. Then I pull their card out of the deck and begin controlling it through the routine. The whole point is to keep people off balance and to allow them to have what they truly want: entertainment.

Teller's story about the Cub Scouts is funny to me because I've found that children of a certain age (around 8-15 or so) are simply unwilling to get into the mindset.

Books are filled with advice for how to deal with members of the audience who are unwilling. They usually involve some kind of ridicule of the skeptics for the benefit of the rest of the audience (Teller's #2).

<comment><USER4> "Magicians do the sleight of hand right in front of a crowd of people, in plain sight, but nobody notices."

Could you define "in plain sight" in this context? Are card manipulations that are almost impossible to detect, even when known and watched for considered "in plain sight", just because they don't happen "out of frame" to use Teller's term. If so, it isn't "because you don't want to notice", it's because you can't see them even if you're looking.

And what of the crafty moves that do happen in plain sight, but are genuinely missed due to misdirection (selective attention) [1]. This isn't because you don't want to notice either. (Amusingly, at first glance I missed the hand dipping in Tellers back pocket in the photo sequence accompanying the article, because I was concentrating on the cards in Teller's hand).

Suspension of disbelief relates to the enjoyment of the effect in the full knowledge that it is an illusion, not that you willfully ignore the mechanics of an illusion that are otherwise apparent (although this can be a fun manipulation of the audience when the mechanism is apparently unintentionally revealed allowing the audience to "catch the magician out" , but subsequently shown to be inconsequential to the effect, catching the audience out in return).

There are exceptions - Penn & Teller's cups and balls springs to mind - <USER2> the joy is in watching just how much more trouble "the secret [is] than the trick seems worth". [2]

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSQJP40PcGI>

[2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrw3euF2cIg>

<comment><USER3> Excellent points.

For example, I'm specifically referring to things like in the rising card, having the person place the card in the "middle of the deck" and holding out the entire deck minus a single card. That's not out of frame at all. It's a reframing of the definition of the middle of the deck. It's in plain sight and depending on the size of the crowd, it's impossible to completely control all your angles.

Another example would be the double or triple lift where the magician lifts more than one card as though they are a single card. This always happens in frame. Everyone is looking at the cards. Even sloppy lifts, from a magician's standpoint, usually pass without detection, regardless of the speed of the lift. I've always figured this is because people focus their attention on the pattern on the back of the card and not the edges of the card.

Lastly, in pickpocketing tricks, the lifts always happen right in plain sight. For example, I may ask you step forward "so I can do card trick," lift your wallet, and with your wallet in my hand (in plain sight to anyone looking at my hand) reach into my own pocket for a deck of cards. I'll try to limit people noticing the wallet by gesturing to something with my other hand. I'll do a card trick or two and then move into the routine that involves your missing wallet. This is what I think Teller means by "out of frame."

The misdirection needs to be there, but if you watch, they happen several steps before a reveal. Savvy members of an audience might watch other parts of a magician's body, but they don't have the correct timing. They're thinking cause, then effect. Not cause, some random things in the middle, then effect.

Anyway, in that time between, people tend to wander in and out. In one moment they may be trying to figure out the trick, in the next, they're being amazed by the trick.

So, I guess to clarify: Once the illusion is completed, people have given up trying to figure it out. They allow themselves to suspend their disbelief in that moment.

<comment><USER4> What I was questioning was _"nobody notices. Because they don't want to notice"_ , as opposed to it having been obfuscated by "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship" to coin a phrase, but from the examples you've given above, it sounds like we agree in principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The coolest magic trick I've witnessed was at a small club in Los Angeles, by a regular of the magic castle. He had me pick a card and without showing him the card, he had me rip the card into pieces and asked me to tightly close my fist. He said he was going to reconstruct the card. I stared at my hand, keeping the fist clenched and waiting for a misdirection. He simply tapped my fist and asked me to open my hand. There was the card, back together again, folded up with the creases -- as far as I could tell -- where the rips had been earlier. To this day I'm still unsure how it works. One of the coolest things I've ever seen.

<comment><USER6> There's a myriad of ways to do this, but usually through slight of hand, he slipped you the duplicate card which you thought was the ripped up version - when it reality, was a folded version.

Here's a great video of how this is done: <http://bit.ly/yWQgQL>

<comment><USER7> In the parent's description, it doesn't sound like he ever gave the card back to the magician. He himself ripped the card, then immediately keeping the pieces tight in his fist.

<comment><USER6> An easy way to do this is to have the folded card in your right hand (palmed), you place the ripped pieces in the same hand, but hold them with your fingers. You look like your folding the pieces up, then make the switch as you place it in his hand, fold it up and tell him to hold it tight.

Of course this is done in one fluid motion, so he doesn't see the slight of hand switch - like the guy does at the very end of the video.

<comment><USER8> The magician wasn't holding the card if I read this correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Make the secret a lot more trouble than the trick seems worth. You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest. My partner, Penn, and I once produced 500 live cockroaches from a top hat on the desk of talk-show host David Letterman. To prepare this took weeks. We hired an entomologist who provided slow-moving, camera-friendly cockroaches (the kind from under your stove don't hang around for close-ups) and taught us to pick the bugs up without screaming like preadolescent girls. Then we built a secret compartment out of foam-core (one of the few materials cockroaches can't cling to) and worked out a devious routine for sneaking the compartment into the hat. More trouble than the trick was worth? To you, probably. But not to magicians."

Does anyone else see a strong isomorphism between that and the advice Seth Godin usually gives? It definitely seems like something an entrepreneur or marketer could learn from - like a way to delight people.

<comment><USER3> There's a grave marker in Los Angeles for Penn and Teller with a 3 of Clubs on it. It's definitely one of their "make a trick a lot more trouble than it's worth" routines. The payoff is featured in one of their videos from the late 80s.

<comment><USER10> Cenotaph, not a grave marker (yet)

It's a chapter in _How to Play in Traffic_ : [http://books.google.com/books/about/Penn_Teller_s_how_to_pla...](http://books.google.com/books/about/Penn_Teller_s_how_to_play_in_traffic.html?id=rAJWN5mVbWUC)

Pic: [http://www.ldphotography.net/Graves/Famous/P/slides/Penn%20a...](http://www.ldphotography.net/Graves/Famous/P/slides/Penn%20and%20Teller.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "You think you've made a choice, just as when you choose between two candidates preselected by entrenched political parties."

That about sums up American politics.

<comment><USER12> And there he reveals the biggest trick pulled on the "free world"... and it's performed over and over and over with the same resulting awe and enchantment in the magicians' subjects. With this trick the viewers are distracted enough to fail to realize that they've selected the same person with the continuation of same agenda every single time.

<comment><USER13> > With this trick the viewers are distracted enough to fail to realize that > they've selected the same person with the continuation of same agenda every > single time.

And what agenda is this?

<comment><USER14> Doctor Evil´s one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's a video of a similar talk he gave: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J5x14AwElOk)

</comment><comment><USER16> _Choice is not freedom._

That's a great aphorism.

</comment><comment><USER17> "It's hard to think critically if you're laughing."

I find this very useful while giving speeches. Most of the audience are quite critical before you can prove yourself worth their time. Putting an appropriate joke beforehand helps to grab their approval earlier.

OFF-TOPIC: Copying any part of the article automatically adds the url of an article to the clipboard. This is first time, I've seen this, very annoying!

<comment><USER18> I think you've found their use of Tynt, or something like it: <http://www.tynt.com/>

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I was just about to post that I'd found it was Tynt via ghostery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The magic industry is like a monument to the shortcuts taken by our mental apparatus of perception.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is he revealing his secrets or is he using #6 against us? :)

</comment><comment><USER22> When we have a passion, skill and master something we create magic. Have you ever seen an athlete, teacher, speaker, salesperson, dancer, lawyer or the written word that put you in awe? This magic is created by transmuting energy, love, skill and practice. These are great skills to master. Anyone pitching to an investor or gaining new clients will do well to learn how to develop this magic.

</comment><comment><USER23> To me those 7 points in Teller's article are very much related to EMOTIONAL DESIGN which is getting very popular among web designer. It is a very interest reading. Thanks for posting it.

</comment><comment><USER24> It is funny how it is fine to be manipulated. Perhaps it's something in our desire/bias to follow, and we do cause we feel respected by those two.

</comment><comment><USER25> Teller should make a show that shows all of his secrets.

<comment><USER3> He does. It's the Penn and Teller show at the Rio in Vegas. Quite a few routines show you exactly how they work. And then they continue the trick to mess with your perception of how the trick was done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A great article, but it has a misunderstanding about what is 'science' trying to figure stuff out. He's right about the neuroscientists - they're trying to figure stuff out from the bottom up, and it's a fairly new discipline. But he's wrong to think that that's all science is. The other half of science in this field is psychology.

Neuroscience is a 'bottom-up' field, starting from the smallest components and trying to understand how they're interacting. Psychology is the 'top-down' field, starting with complex phenomenon and trying to break them down. The psychology of cognition and attenion is the stuff that's relevant where magic's involved. Much of the things that Penn & Teller expose in the workings of magic is known to cognitive and attentional psychology - it's the flawless execution to make it work that is the trick, an idea supported by the magician's mantra 'practise practise practise'.

The problem with the two disciplines above is that there's so much we don't know - we're nowhere near being able to make them 'meet in the middle'. The human mind is incredibly complex.</comment>


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